Masters’ Houses: Modern comfort

    Design Walter Gropius / Built 1925-26
    Commissioned by the municipality of Dessau
    Kühn Malvezzi, Berlin

While “housing for the minimum subsistence level” was built in Törten, the Masters’ Houses in Ebertalallee pursued a different agenda: based on variations of a single ground plan and consisting of three semi-detached and one detached house, the estate tends to fulfil the requirements of middle class housing in both size and spatial organisation. The added intention was to present, in an exemplary way, the technological achievements that favoured the rational organisation of the household. The location, between two monuments of the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm, was also selected for programmatic reasons. The generosity of fittings, furnishings and locations courted controversy, were deemed antisocial and provoked the younger members of the Bauhaus to produce alternative plans. In the 1930s, the Masters’ Houses were converted into residences. Smaller windows were fitted and ground plans were adapted. While the Gropius House and a semi-detached house were destroyed in 1945, the remaining buildings housed families and a public outpatients’ department. After 1990, the Masters’ Houses were renovated and new uses were found for them. The nonexistent “Gropius Masters’ House” has courted more controversy about the Bauhaus legacy than any other Bauhaus building in the city.

Pictures of the Workshop